martincath

Happy birthday! Good idea to bookmark for later; once you actually have your hotel chosen, I'd be happy to give specific instructions to that location via SkyTrain - and warn you if there's much of a walk involved, so you can ponder cab vs. SkyTrain overall value rather than just cost! For planning, I'd suggest you budget US$30 to get from airport to hotel - cab fare - and then any changes will always be savings! As a Senior, you can buy a Concession fare for Transit - you save at least a buck by using the ticket machine instead of tapping. The downside is you need to know what to ask the machine for - your time and day of travel can both impact how many Zones you need fare for, although if flight schedules remain the same as you mentioned earlier odds are you'll be arriving in the evening which keeps life simple: regardless of weekday, weekend, or holiday the whole system becomes 1 Zone at 6:30pm daily! A 1 Zone Concession ticket right now is CAD$2.15, compared to $3.20 regular fare; the AddFare of $5 also applies to all fares inbound from the airport. If you arrive earlier on a weekday, it's 2 Zones to downtown so the price would go up to $3.15 for a Concession fare, saving $1.50 now compared to regular adult rate. Everywhere that you use Credit Cards in Canada - or any other country - bills in local currency by default. Sometimes you are offered the chance to change that currency to your own, 'for your convenience', but always say No. The convenience fee is usually 4%+, far more than the typical FTF of 2.5%, so even if you did not have your No FTF MasterCard you're better off just paying in local currency. MC is probably the most generally accepted type of credit in Canada, though Visa is also good in ~99% of the places MC is taken (Costco is the huge exception - no Visa here!); offhand I can't think of anywhere that takes Visa but not MC; AmEx is reasonably common; Diners though, almost nowhere except hotels and some fancy restos accepts. Vancouver is an extremely tappy town - most of us locals only use cash in a literal handful of small restos which remain cash only, and I think we actually have more No Cash places since Covid than we do Cash Only! Even very small transactions like a coffee the expectation is to tap your card or smartphone; at sitdown restos you'll find a card machine gets brought to your table rather than having to go up to the counter as is still common in the US. NB: if you do not already have a PIN for your card, I would suggest asking for one from your card issuer - the tap limit most places is $100+ and in theory with a foreign card your servers should be able to override the machine to make a 'swipe and sign' happen in a resto or shop, but being able to put your PIN in if the terminal asks for it will always save you time.

Alrighty, no waffle, just the facts in hopes of clarity about how to get to Auberge - board the train at YVR, there's good signage but the crux is you want to go up to the top floor of the airport, leave the terminal building over the elevated walkway to the station. You can't get on the wrong train here - they only go one way, into town. If you are not 65+ you may as well skip the ticket machines, simply tap a credit card with an NFC Chip (the little WiFi symbol - most cards even in the US have had these for going on a decade now) directly onto the fare gate and it opens; tap the SAME CARD on the way out again and the system does all the math for you, charging you one Adult fare at the time and day of your travel without you needing to worrry about calculating Zones, AddFare etc. The only way to screw this up is if you have multiple cards in your wallet and don't take the one you want to use out of it - tap a wallet and it's a crapshoot which card is charged, so you might end up with two maximum fares billed to two different cards (if you tap In, but not Out, the system assumes you rode through all three Zones and bills accordingly) Once you roll into Waterfront Station - the other end of the line - get off and walk toward the REAR of the train, looking for signs toward GRANVILLE ST exit. There's an elevator, escalator, and stairs that pop you out at the starting point of the map I linked before, corner of Granville and Hastings - this Streetview should show you the above-ground exit, the big blue square with a white T in it (the symbol for Translink, our local transit company) is on the side of the escalator/stair exit, middle of the screen if the link behaved. As to your choice of hotel - I'm not remotely on the same page as you here so I'll avoid further recommendations other than to reiterate you should wait until the 11 month mark so you see ALL the options! I'm struggling to reconcile 'only' 98 bucks more for Auberge as if that's a meaningless sum of money to you in the same paragraph as stating that you are thrifty, and the whole 'pay more for a hotel to avoid getting a new phone service' thing I'm just not getting at all...

Whoops - the free network is #VanWiFi, ignore the above, I was conflating the airport and city freebie network names!

Sorry, your first post did say you were looking at a Repo cruise, so no point me mentioning the return flights! Yes, Auberge can be easily SkyTrained to (regular light rail with two rails, not a monorail, although if you ask random Vancouverites to direct you to the monorail you have a pretty good chance they'll known what you mean - and perhaps give a rendition of the Simpson's classic song, I know I always do!) but if you wait until ~25 Oct you'll see more hotels - many don't give bookings more than 11 months ahead. If Auberge is showing as your best priced hotel, then you're missing about 75% of the hotels downtown because while it's a bargain compared to Pan Pacific or Fairmonts, it's still up there in swankfactor! It's part of one of the fanciest members-only clubs in Canada, so even if you're staying there you won't be allowed into all of the dining options - but the Lion's Pub is public, and has a pretty wide menu if you're hungry on arrival. The walk from the Granville St exit of Waterfront station is only about 250yards - it's one of the most convenient hotels for SkyTrain from YVR, as long as you pay attention inside the station as to which exit you are taking (most of the crowd will go the opposite way you want to, to get into the above-ground station proper where they can transfer to Seabus, the other SkyTrain line, helicopters and float plane airports, heavy rail to the tricities, or any of the hotels at the pier - it's our biggest transit hub!) I'll still recommend extra days in Vancouver since you've never been, just all precruise now(!), because we are an excellent city - hands down the cleanest, safest, and nicest of any of your stops on a coastal repo (unless you're also stopping in Victoria) and likely cheaper than any other big city stops because of the currency exchange rate... In all seriousness, you can easily spend a week here visiting multiple attractions daily without getting bored - and that's without any of the 'go hike up a mountain' energetic people stuff! But if you're unable to squeeze any more free time to extend your trip, so your hotel is simply to sleep in the night before boarding, then all the more reason to book the Y or the Panda Pod - both should save you serious coin compared to Auberge, enough to pay cab fare and then some if you are too wiped on arrival to consider SkyTraining (current fare CAD$37 to the Y - payable by MC/Visa, although cabbies often also take US greenbacks at a terrible exchange rate). Oh, I think you also mentioned your Tracfone has WiFi - so you will be able to use that all over Vancouver, there's a free city-run network that broadcasts as #YVRWiFi, as well as the airport, the pier, SkyTrain and various other public cafes, libraries etc. The city one even operates in chunks of Stanley Park, so you can find your way around with a live map most of the time - and Google not only sent bikes and guys with backpack cameras around a lot of our non-car pathways, but they actually power our local transit system's routing so their local info is bang up to date with transit timetables, and usually pretty accurate about bike and pedestrian routes too.

Well, abandon thoughts of Uber unless you upgrade your phone - it's an App based system, no actual voice call available as far as I know! Same for Lyft and the other Not A Taxi outfits. At YVR you have the option of a fixed-rate cab to anywhere around Vancouver and Richmond (where the airport, and all-but-two 'airport' hotels live). If you can trundle or carry your own luggage around at an airport - i.e. you don't use a porter, need a wheelchair etc. - then you are physically capable of using the SkyTrain. You'll walk further inside Canada Place when boarding than you do to get to or from the stations at each end! So for a solo, especially a Senior 65+, the pricing of SkyTrain is unbeatable - and if where you are going is ~10mins walk or less from the nearest station, it's also virtually always the fastest way to travel as our lack of highways anywhere in Vancouver means often-brutal traffic delays on roads unless you're on a very late or very early flight. I'll reiterate the same advice I gave above - stay downtown in the YWCA Hotel, as that puts you close to most everything that tourists want to do, a cheap (<$10) cab ride to the pier if you don't feel up to walking a mile with bags, and as virtually the only hotel with solo rooms pretty much guaranteed to be the cheapest hotel around as well as one of the best rated at any price-point. I'll also advise that you budget for extra nights on both ends (as many as you can afford the time and money for, we have tonnes of stuff to do here!) - but at the very least an extra night will help you recover from the time difference on the way here as well as give sensible padding to your schedule in case of flight delays, and also give you the best possible flight options on the way home. We've got a good friend in Gainesville so we've done the 'top left to bottom right' thing quite a bit - if you book a flight early the next day it's usually significantly cheaper than an early afternoon flight to the same place precisely because there are several thousand extra pax fighting for those later-in-the-day flights! If your budget is seriously tight, I'd still do the extra nights - for a solo, the Panda Pod hotel in Richmond can be under a hundred bucks a night even in summer, so while it's nowhere near as convenient for touristy stuff as the Y, odds are you can save enough on an early AM flight to pay for your stay.

Bruce asks sensible questions - but unless you have mobility issues I always recommend SF City Guides walking tours. Plug your exact date in to see what's available - I've taken a bunch, never a bad one, volunteer guides get excellent training and it's strictly a 'donate what you want' in the envelope at the end which goes back to the org to keep it funded.

Since you've gone a few days without any replies @packedandready, even though I have not taken the tour I'll give you my take on it purely from a cost vs. what I know about Victoria basis - like pretty much every cruiseline-booked excursion in Vic or Van the value for money is simply terrible, but if you want to actually take a big bus tour you really don't have any other viable tour options except to book via the line! Carriage tours are slow, short, and kaching, but a custom tour with a car/van & driver (assuming any are available - depends a lot on if your cruise is this season or next) if you can fill their vehicle could be cheaper per person than the cruiselines, go more places in the same time as no need to factor in loading/unloading dozens of folks, and of course in CAD so an immediate ~33% discount on the price if you're used to USD. A bit of research yourself on what's pretty to look at (because basically nothing except bars & restos are likely to be actually open in Vic in the evenings) and you could consider simply using cabs (about $10 per vehicle to get to the inner harbour from the pier) or local buses ($5pp for a day pass, but have exact change in CAD ready) to pootle around for a few hours. Honestly, Vic in daytime is so much better for a tourist - well worth at least a weekend in the city, and a bunch of stuff across the Island that's worthy of visiting - so if you think you'll ever get back to this neck of the woods do some advance planning to add on some days next time and just chill. There are plenty of decent pubs and bars around downtown, taking a very leisurely walk of about an hour from the pier lets you see parliament, Empress hotel and other nice downtown Ye Olde buildings all lit up, have a beer or two and meander back to the ship is a perfectly pleasant way to spend the evening - frankly it's all I've ever done on any of these short port stops for PVSA compliance!

The YWCA downtown might be even cheaper than the airport hotels are, especially if you plan to go to the hotel to drop your bags then go sightseeing (i.e. travel an extra round trip out and back, which isn't needed at the Y). Any hotel with 'airport' in the name will operate a shuttle to YVR so simply check on the many and varied sites like expedia, hotels dot com, etc. to see who is cheapest on your specific date - typical big chain hotels if you have points, some smaller local ones, but they all sell via the consolidators as far as I know, other than perhaps the Panda Pod hotel (which is literally a 'box with a bed in it' for your accommodation, with suitcases needing stored separately, but can be mad cheap especially for Solos)

You need to contact your cruiseline special needs department to arrange this - and they should provide a location, contact number for any problems on the day. I'd suggest maybe reposting over on the Disabled Cruising board - many of whom travel of course with their own equipment, but mgiht still have rented/used a pusher for embarkation with luggage - and also on the Silversea board too for line-specific first-hand experience...

I think you must have correctly input the relevant station, because I get 700metres walk on Google maps (which by the time you actually leave the platform to get up to street level, is going to be pretty much bang on a half mile). You know you, your suitcase(s), how heavily you pack 'em, and how good the wheels are so you'll have to decide whether the extra cost of a cab door-to-door, or maybe trying to flag a cab/call an uberlyft from the station for the short ride to the Y, is worth the extra expense/time compared to just walking from SkyTrain. Unless you get a porter at YVR, you'll likely cover at least a quarter mile from baggage carousel to the taxi queue or SkyTrain - and many airports are bigger than YVR, so you may already be used to schlepping your bags further than you think! It is an easy walk as walks with luggage go, wide sidewalks in good condition, slightly downhill - I'm a big fat fatty in far from great shape and I have walked from my place (just shy of 1.5miles) to the ship or vice versa multiple times, sometimes dragging two suitcases on the way home as my missus has managed to go straight to work off a cruise a few times... Certainly any daytime arrival, even fairly late evening, there should be plenty of folks out and about - if your flight gets delayed until after dark, Robson will likely feel most comfortable to walk along - plenty restos right along it to the Beaty end, so more pedestrian activity and eyes on the street - but even Georgia should have folks around to make it feel like a perfectly safe walk even as a solo, so it really is just factoring in whether more money but less effort for a cab wins over less money and some leg-stretching by SkyTraining downtown.

No worries; in terms of timing the biggest variable is how many other folks land about the same time as you do but a ballpark time of an hour to get through customs/immigration after landing (it can be quite a long walk from some gates!), then 30-45mins to downtown, is a pretty reasonable estimate most of the time. SkyTrain doesn't worry about traffic so is very consistently ~24mins (and the <10min walk from Vancouver City Centre station, the closest to the Y, is slightly downhill along well-populated sidewalks so should feel safe even if you arrive in the evening) while cabs mean door-to-door convenience but unless it's a late evening flight some traffic delay so they're probably a wash in timing, but much pricier for a solo (fixed rate CAD$37 to the Y, Uberlyft might save $5 if no Surge) compared to at most CAD$9.65 (weekday arrival, before 6:30pm - weekends/evenings a Senior 65+ pays only $7.15).

Close is relative - compared to most cruise ports, everything in Vancouver is close! However, despite the name of the SkyTrain station up the street from the Y, it and everything else west of the stadium feels strongly isolated from Chinatown because of the viaducts. It's not much of a vertical drop, but unless you go down toward the coastal edges of the little peninsula that the downtown core sits on, you only have Georgia and Dunsmuir which both run across a bunch of greenspace (although the grass is all fake on the Sportsball fields, there's a fair bunch of real trees). Chinatown is well east and below the Y, even the lower part of the SkyTrain station is in Crosstown, but our stations named after a neighbourhood rather than the street they are on tend to be a bit woolly; the Olympic Village station on the Canada Line is not only not in the village, it's further away from it than the pre-existing Main St/Scienceworld station is! Stadium/Chinatown is better - it nails the Stadium part, but arguably Main St is yet again closer to the core of Chinatown (which is centred on Keefer & Main). I see you already booked the Y - so yes, 48hr cancellation means do so at least that much time before your planned arrival and you should not be charged, in case you find a better deal.

If you're on a one-way or Vancouver RT @racnwdow, you'll have more luck down here than any cruise port - at the very least you can sample pemmican and some game meats at Salmon & Bannock on their regular menu, and if it's the right time of year Oolichan is featured in various forms (fried like whitebait, or pressed for their oil which you dunk bread in like olive oil, or smoked like kippers) and I've had hand-raked smoked herring roe which was very interesting (fresh branches of spruce are used to scrape the eggs free, then the now-briny needles popped in the smoker with them). Pre-covid S&B used to give free samples of various foods that are legal to hunt as a local native, but illegal to sell - I have not seen this happen since Covid personally, but I only visit a couple of times a year and it was never advertised, so it may still happen occasionally. Smoked Sealion was new to me when I was offered that at S&B - better than Seal, not as good as Whale, it seems the bigger the marine mammal the tastier to my palate! Fat is where the flavour is, as they say! Depending what 'strange' means to you OP, you might also find plenty of stuff on the regular and seasonal menus of many local restos - jellyfish, sea urchin, various fish roes, geoduck, octopus, spot prawn are not hard to find locally but might seem terribly exotic to most folks! We're also the only place you can eat fresh King Crab in cruise season - if you have enough friends to split the meal with a multi-course feast begins with displaying your crab plucked forth from a tank...

Haha, no, you'll be fine; the last couple I met there to take on a Stroll (I'm one of the local Buddies) were recently-retired folks staying before a cruise, and when I walked into the lobby they were neither the oldest nor the most cruise-y looking people in the room (I held the door for a multi-generational family group leaving, who had already put their cruise tags on their suitcases!) The YWCA Hotel always has a decent spread of ages, lots of kids as they have some of the very few good family rooms in the city too (the closest thing to a dorm they have are 5 single bed rooms, and their paired 'Jack and Jill' 2 person rooms sharing one bathroom are ideal for families), it's really just the actual hostels in town that run young - although even then there are exceptions, I have a friend in his 70s who still prefers to stay in 'youth' hostels whenever he travels!

The Y operates like any other hotel, no restriction on type of traveler - their regular double en suite rooms sell out consistently on summer nights. The only other place I can think of that might be cheaper for a solo would be the Panda Pod hotel out in Richmond, where rates even in summer can be <$100 per night (I just checked a last-minute booking for 2 nights this weekend - total incl tax just under CAD$200). You do get a locker for one big suitcase included in the rates as well as your 'bed in a box' for sleeping - and can pay $5 per extra big bag per night. If you're someone who plans to be on the go your whole trip and literally just sleep in your hotel it could be ideal, although each trip downtown & back would be about 40mins (hotel is ~600yds from Richmond-Brighouse, then a close to 30min ride to Waterfront) if a train is waiting, up to an extra 20mins if you just miss a train late in the evening when frequency is low.

Thanks for tagging me in @Milhouse - your summary above doesn't seem to need any further input from me! For all solo travelers especially I do indeed recommend the YWCA Hotel - it's virtually the only hotel with single rooms, so odds are even better than normal that the price will be lower, and it's a significantly-better hotel than any other budget option in shiny-newness, facilities, and reviews. Despite the name, it's a real hotel not a hostel - no dorms, but they do have big shared kitchens and laundries, and if you're the kind of person who likes to chat to fellow travelers you might meet a potential buddy or two in the shared spaces to hang out with while in town. The only noise issue there is from BC Place - which has tight limits on how late shows run, so even worst case of a bit concert the last of the crowd will have left the stadium before midnight, and if it's any kind of Sportsball event much earlier than that. I'd also recommend contacting Stroll Buddy - no guarantee that anyone will be available on your date, but if they are you get a free (no tips expected even) local guide to show you around town, which should help get you comfortable with navigating the city. If you'd feel more comfortable wandering with another person or group, posting on your cruise roll call to see if perhaps there are any other folks pre-cruising that you get a decent vibe from and might want to hang out with might be a good option too - although as a solo you will find it easier to get into most 'hot ticket' restos as a walk-in so sometimes it's good to be on your own!

There are indeed two - links to both Trolley and Westcoast. Peruse the websites, especially the maps, because honestly it's almost as if the new folks (trolley) said 'OK, with zero competition the old HOHO has cut their route ridiculously, doesn't tour Stanley Park at all any more just a stop at basically the same spot you can take a 19 transit bus to! There's a market for folks who want to actually SEE the park I reckon...' and then basically put no effort into stops anywhere else useful beyond the pier! If you drop the cash for a ticket on both, you'd actually see a lot - but neither route is ideal on its own any more IMO! For folks who can't walk much, I'd say the new Trolley is better because otherwise you simply won't see Stanley Park at all, as the only other in-park tour are the hella-expensive, very short routed, carriages... Taking a regular transit bus to Granville Island though is cheap and easy (the 50 goes from close to the pier to just outside GI, same block as the HOHO stop), so as a combo with a Day Pass the new trolley HOHO is probably a better bet for you. Whereas active folks who would happily bike or hike around the park and Seawall might find the old big bus WestCoast route more convenient, as it gets you to GI, Chinatown, etc. which the new one doesn't.

Rent a car, drive to the ferry - local transit on the island basically sucks once you leave Victoria, so unless you're visiting friends who will chauffeur you around places/lend you their car, you'll realistically need a vehicle to do anything much. If you do have friends there, you could try the new Hullo ferry to Nanaimo - it docks downtown, so no need for transport on this end, and would cut your friends travel down significantly to ~90mins+traffic each way compared to the ~4hrs per leg coming all the way into Vancouver. Or rent a car in Nanaimo, avoiding the cost of taking it on the ferry which even with the greater competion from far more offices here in civilization might still result in a lower price overall. Or if time is more valuable than money, fly - YBL has scheduled flights on Pacific Coastal as well as floatplanes (although I think you'd have to charter a plane from Vancouver).

And I appreciate you clarifying the situation you experienced - from the clumsy email apology wording alone I do believe that was Inez, the whole PR/schmoozing side of the restaurant trade is definitely not her strength, she's a 'Cook by name, cook by nature' who pretty much stumbled into being successful because she makes great food rather than trying to build a restaurant empire, and feeding people really seems to be her raison d'etre. Not to minimise your feelings at the time, but hopefully to to let you and your wife look back at this from a different perspective - I've been on the receiving end of that bone-dry delivery myself, and even though I run pretty dark and sarcastic myself I was a bit flummoxed the first time. It was also the first time I was served smoked Oolichan - I had finished most of my portion but not yet the heads, and from behind me this voice piped up along the lines of "Is there something wrong with your Oolichan?" and turning I saw this lady in whites who I only later found out was Inez. My response was something like "No, I'm just saving the heads for last," (which I was; this was closest thing I'd had to a decent kipper in years so I was savouring every bite rather than just munching the fish whole - but anyone familiar with really small fish, like Whitebait, knows that just like Quint in Jaws you eat 'the whole damn thing' so I can definitely see that how I was handling my food looked as if I had no idea how I was supposed to eat it, knife-and-forking it in tiny portions instead of just gobbling them down in two or three bites). "Well don't forget to eat the heads, they're the best part, we usually eat them first..." was approximately how the end of the conversation from her side went as she walked away - and I did raise an eyebrow toward my wife and whisper: "That was a bit weird - do you think she'd be genuinely offended if I didn't eat the heads?" It would have been easy to take offence - "How dare she try to tell me how to eat my meal? Why not at least ask politely if we are enjoying our food instead of assuming there was an issue? Why does it even matter - she's getting paid whether or not I eat the dang fish heads at all let alone when?" would all be perfectly valid takes... but I'm glad that instead I gave her the benefit of the doubt, because it became apparent that this was someone who genuinely cared that her food made people happy, wants patrons to try possibly-weird-to-them food because it's delicious, and while her manner certainly isn't polished maybe provide a little education about local culture as well as food. We had another brief chat at the end of the meal - she did follow-up on the initial comment too by asking how the heads were now that I had finished and seemed genuinely happy I enjoyed them, and we shared a few tales of foraging and fishing for seasonal produce in childhood. It's actually been several years since I've chatted with Inez though, because the resto has been so consistently busy I can't remember the last time I saw her glad-handing her way around the dining room - ironically if our visits had been reversed, you folks getting an error-prone new waitron and me getting dodgy banter from Inez, we'd both have had a better experience! It hadn't even crossed my mind to give any kind of warning about S&B in that sort of context, it's been so long since I adjusted my own expectations to fit local native cultural norms, so it's good that you posted your experience so others who might take things in similar fashion have more understanding. I should probably start popping a caveat onto my recco for S&B similar to what I do with Phnom Penh, whose service levels definitely come across as rather brusque to folks unfamiliar with such things. Again, thanks for sharing - and I hope your cruiseline did a good job of catering to your wife's dietary restrictions without commentary!

If you have not left out any relevant information, if the interaction went as you say above, whoever served you should not be in their job long. Personally I'd have escalated it at the time rather than complain after the fact - and unless it was resolved right away I'd have walked out without dining - but at the very least I assume you're putting this info on Yelp, Tripadvisor etc. where more folks will see it and the resto will have a chance to respond? Given every server introduces themselves by name and indigenous group affiliation(s) at S&B, it should be trivially easy to ensure that you report the right person so they can get the training they obviously need, or find some new employment better-suited to their temperament... Weirdly enough, I had a bad experience there last month myself but in extremely different circumstances: we had a new server who managed to fluff putting the order in to the kitchen both at all (our food was delayed significantly until she realised she hadn't actually placed the order), and also managed to get a dish wrong (elk ordered, bison brought to table) which resulted in a further delay resolving. However, we felt the offered compensation to be good enough to resolve the issue right away - we were brought complimentary candied salmon to tide us over until our ordered appies came, and when the wrong dish came to light she offered, without prompting, to comp our booze for the mistake (the most expensive element of our meal) as well as redoing my sablefish from scratch so we could both eat together once my wife's elk steak was cooked. I feel this illustrates pretty well that even new staff, not part of the family, from a couple of thousand miles away in Manitoba (Métis) feel empowered there, compared to far too many restos where comping anything requires going up the chain - and also that good customer service is taken quite seriously at S&B, even if they're never going to be winning a Michelin star as the style of service will never be polished enough. Reference to the resto as 'ours' or even 'mine' is also very normal there... I've heard it from virtually all the staff, few of whom are family these days, it's usually part of their opening spiel to say 'welcome to our restaurant, on the tradtional unceded lands...' and make reference to 'our specials' etc., etc. Given that Inez cooks, even if she was working herself the night you visited she would not have been taking orders - I've seen her roust kids from doing their homework to take my order back in the day so she could stay in the kitchen! The overall vibe remains more Family Diner than Fancy Resto, despite experimenting with a host/sommelier to gussy things up in the evenings - not 'edgy' like the Elbow Room was back in the day, with deliberately insulting servers, but the kind of place where if you interact with the servers more than simply asking for what you want you may get some banter going back & forth, and sometimes a joke just doesn't land right. My wife also rarely orders an entree, almost never at S&B because they're a good size - the only reason she did so this most recent visit is that Elk is her absolute favourite meat. She most often orders the sausage appie as her main course. I say this because that dish is $2 less than the dinner salad on the list of entrees at S&B, so I have personal experience of someone at my table ordering even less for their entree than the poster above does, and it's never been commented on how little she orders - although my own over-ordering has certainly generated commentary! That dinner salad is a core menu item, and a very common order with a big chunk of the local demographic - we are the skinniest city in Canada - so insulting someone ordering that would be a great way to get your resto cancelled by an army of the Influenced as the 'skinny b*tches' of Vancouver's Insta crowd united to take 'em down! I've been visiting at least annually for 13 years, from back when it was a much more casual mostly-family-run affair that was open from lunchtime, and I'd often drop in during the in-between hours to order a couple of nibbles. Unfortunately when I discovered I was diabetic ~10years ago my bannock consumption went *poof* so it dropped out of regular rotation and became a 'birthday treat' or similar, at most twice a year - so while I recognize Inez and a couple of other long-term staff, mostly it's new faces and I certainly don't get any special treatment as a regular, unlike some other spots where we get the full kissy cheeks and 'your usual table?' malarky! I certainly won't be amending my continued recommendation of S&B based on this experience, as it flies in the face of everything I know about the place - the very definition of an outlier, even if there are no other factual errors than identifying the person concerned.

Both - it's literally Stop 1, the beginning of the route, for both the long-standing West Coast and the new Great Canadian Trolley Co. Do take note of the rest of their routes though when deciding, as they have almost an opposite approach (with GCTC it's all about multiple stops in Stanley Park, passing through the West End to get there and back otherwise just the very heart of the downtown core; WC gets you over to Granville Island and into Chinatown on their HOHO but their only stop in the park is basically the same spot that local transit bus 19 takes you) So if you don't plan to/cannot manage a long walk or bike ride around Stanley Park, the Trolley HOHO will show you an awful lot more of it - though still not as much as getting around yourself as it can't drive on the Seawall - but you'll need to get yourself to Granville Island, whether by water taxi, transit bus, or a long and indirect walk/bike ride.

YVR has multiple car rentals on and off-site; several downtown rental offices are easily walkable from the pier, and there's always at least one rental franchise on-site at Canada Place (the building contains the pier, the Pan Pacific Hotel, lots of parking) but the franchisee does change occasionally. Downtown Vancouver in general is compact, easily walked around, safe, and you'll find rental cars located at many of the fancy hotels, but less than a mile from basically every downtown hotel. Compare the cost of your car rental carefully - all airport locations get hit with a hefty extra daily fee, I think just over 20%, but if you have a different drop point planned might still find the cheapest overall rate is from YVR. Use Costco if a member, or Kayak, which both enable comparing multiple rental locations at once with different firms to minimise the time taken to compare all options. Unless you do stay 'out in the sticks' with free parking, or have a big group, a car is often pricey and inconvenient given parking costs and the frequency of break-ins to any car with shiny things left on display! The vast majority of our popular tourist sites are downtown or convenient for transit - some even have 'free' shuttles from downtown - and one of the cheapest hotels in the entire region is also one of the best (YWCA Hotel) and bang downtown. I think that Vancouver proper has only one remaining true Motel still in business - the 2400 - and it's horribly out of date with no renos for decades, although is one of very few 'cottage' motels left anywhere in the world now, often gets filmed in. HOHO stops running very early - if you have a typical ~4hr stop, it will have already stopped running by the time you arrive; even if it's a longer 6hr visit, you might not even have time to complete a loop of the HOHO as last departure is IIRC 5pm, so unless it's an unusually long stop in Vic your options are very, very slim. Evenings in Victoria are unfortunately very slow - it is not a town of party animals, government 9-5ers and Retirees are the Generic Victorians so the city buttons up early! Cruiseline tours and expensive charters of carriages are the only reliable evening group tours, and virtually every ticketed attraction will be shut by 5 or 6pm in April. Butchart Gardens might open later, if the cruiseline is running tours!

Not sure which service you're inquring about - post right above yours mentioned transit buses and water taxis, my earlier post about HOHO - but easy enough to cover the bases! HOHO stops right outside the pier; different transit bus routes have different stops, none on Canada Place but several within a couple of blocks - and Google Maps has every single stop listed, as well as all timetables, as it powers our official Translink route planner so is bang up to date; water taxis don't come around to the Coal Harbour side of downtown, strictly remain on the False Creek side, so the nearest stop is about a mile-and-a-half away - just walk all the way down Hornby (the steps and ramps directly opposite Canada Place, first couple of blocks are entirely pedestrianized) until you run out of street at the other end... but it's a pretty boring urban street route, so I'd honestly just hop on the 50 bus from outside Waterfront Station if you want to e.g. visit Granville Island.

Trying to parse this - I think you mean you are flying day before cruise to overnight in the YWCA hotel, and want to stash your bags after you arrive, but before your hotel check-in? If so, I'm surprised the Y has stopped holding bags for guests day of check-in or -out, as we did it ourselves (admittedly that was about 20 years ago) but folks I gave a walking tour to last summer also stashed their bags after checking out. But assuming you contacted them directly and they confirmed it's no longer an offered service, you still have plenty of options - try Bounce which drops flags on the locations so you can see where they are before paying, and has at least half a dozen locations closer to the Y than the pier with prices from $9 per bag for a same day drop & pickup.

I haven't eaten in Victoria for at least a decade; I preferred Kirin when I was trying the various dim sum options back then, and then when Dynasty opened they became my regular 'kinda fancy dim sum' spot. Kirin stayed in the mix occasionally, but their City Square location (now closed) rather than downtown - so honestly I can't say if downtown Kirin or Victoria have improved, worsened, or remained about the same since your last visit!